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Yahoo Buying Inktomi
soldack writes "Byte And Switch has a story about Yahoo buying Inktomi. I imagine they will stop using Google. What does this mean for both Google and Yahoo? How much of Google's traffic came from Yahoo? How much is going to come from AOL using Google?" markpapadakis adds a link to CNET's story on same.
Does Yahoo still control a majority of users? I would have expected that MSN would have the greatest portal penetration simply by being the default home-page under windows, and most people I know have been using Google for their searching for a couple of years now (And I mean non-technical users)...Is Yahoo even that relevant any more?
Altavista made it big with babelfish (it's quite possibly the only translator I use). Google made it big with speed, pdf to html (plus pdf searches), cached pages, etc etc.
Seems to me yahoo is more of a "portal" loosely than a search engine anymore, but I can't remember the last time I heard anyone say "I found [insert whatever] on inktomi" at least not in the last 6 years.
My take, google will be fine, I can't begin to name the number of computers I see with google.com as their homepage (more than slashdot).
Ignore the "p2p is theft" trolls, they're just uninformed
does anyone else think yahoo made this move because google has become a bit more of a portal of late, i.e. google news? there is no doubt google has the superior search technology, but i think yahoo is a little upset that google seems to be trying to be more than 'just search'.
it'll be interesting to see if any overt enmity develops between these two stanford-born businesses....
smd4985
Inktomi gave up their general full-Web search years ago, in favor of selling embedded search services / software to Web site owners. If you look at their site, they also promote their expertise in the second-ickiest of Internet businesses: search engine placement. Yahoo has probably decided that the Inktomi search software is the best available for outright purchase, especially with their ad-placement programs in place.
Save Maine's economy: write stuff down. All comments are exclusively my own, not my employer.
Google's pagerank algorithm suite is unmatched for searches "in the wild". It uses links between pages to work out search relevance. However, that algorithm is totally inappropriate for providing search within Yahoo's own categorised database; Inktomi's engine is precisely suited for such a task. Yahoo has been using Google and Inktomi's search tech for external and internal searches, respectively, for a while now. I see no reason for Yahoo's buyout to change this. I imagine Yahoo would buy Google too, if it could.
Inktomi's current customers
Yahoo would be well-served building a cross-reference ranking from Google + Inktomi's results. Most of my searches are quite pointed anyway though, so I'm not sure how this could be improved.
Go try the Hotbot or MSN searches yerself. This may well be the future rankings on Yahoo results.
As a trial, I searched for "Oklahoma Dry Spell" and although there was one coinciding match in the top 2, the rest were completely different. It seems Inktomi is a bit more relaxed for inclusions. (14,888 vs Yahoo's 12,800).
For one of the myriad of search engine reviews comparing (roughly) Inktomi and Yahoo/Google, see this page
mug
I use google not because it gives better results but because i really like the adfree slick interface. Google is user oriented and hasnt fallen into factored searches yet. I think Yahoo needs to get back to basics again and focus on users needs. There are much left to do in search engines left and advertising is not what people using them are after.
HTTP/1.1 400
Which is approximately as news-worthy.
Yahoo is one of Google's biggest customers--not only in the somewhat significant "hits" catagory, but the more important "licensing" catagory. Yahoo pays Google real cash--and this helps Google.
However, Yahoo is also one of Google's biggest customers. Eventually this was going to come to and end--and it just did IMO.
I'm sure many if not most of people looking to search will head to Google, but the Yahoo partnership was/is a boon for Google.
To me, Yahoo just called for a fight.
So close and yet so far from the world's perfect ID number
inktomi uses paid inclusion, which means top results have been paid for, unlike google, which gives you true results
Parent note is disinformative.
What was sold was the enterprise search software tool, not the general search engine database.
Yahoo needs Google more than Google needs Yahoo. Google is one of the few sites on the internet that could go subscription only and still do very well long term. If Yahoo goes subscription for all of its services, people will just move on to another portal. Sure I love that Google is free, but considering how useful Google is I would certainly pay say $19 or more a year for its services. In fact I couldn't imagine an Internet without Google, I'm too reliant on it to go without it. I've tried some of the newer search engines, but really none of them are even close to being as accurate as Google. I'd rather go back to surfing the web with Mosaic than give up Google.
If you wanna get rich, you know that payback is a bitch
Inktomi sells inclusion in their results to paying customers. Many results that you normally click on in MSN or other Inktomi distribution partners cost money to the advertiser (about 10 cents each click and up).
To be fair to Inktomi, while they charge for inclusion, your site is still ranked for relevance, so there is no guarantee that your paid links will filter to the top of a search. This is all a Cost-per-Click (CPC) model, or a one time fee for inclusion over a set period of time.
How does this affect Google?
Remember that Google makes their money from search distribution and their sponsored listings. In the short term, it hurts Google a little bit, because they won't be getting paid from Yahoo for that distribution, if Yahoo decides not to use Google in the future. In the long term it does not matter much, because Google's long term revenue model/strategy is the Sponsored Listings (which are being shown at AOL and a variety of their partners ), which Yahoo was not displaying at all. So even if Yahoo were sending 1 billion searches over to Google, none of those are monetized at all.
How will this affect Yahoo?
Over the long term, Yahoo will make more money from this deal, than by using Google's results, because many of the clickthrough's in their standard search (again.. if they use Inktomi instead of Google for that), will provide some CPC revenue for them. They basically want to monetize the standard search results, and the Inktomi acquisition will help them to do that.
Newsfollow.com
Search engines are being bought up left and right, and the price keeps going up.
Teoma bought by Ask Jeeves ($4M).
Wisenut bought by Looksmart ($9M).
Inktomi bought by Yahoo ($235M).
Ask Jeeves realized its search technology didn't work, and bought Teoma. Looksmart, now a "search placement" provider, realized no one would look at its commercial listings if they didn't give users some non-commercial search content as well. Yahoo seems to have come to the same conclusion, after farming out to google, etc. If they want to make revenue, they seem to have realized that they have to invest in some original technology.
---- "If we have to go on with these damned quantum jumps, then I'm sorry that I ever got involved" - Erwin Schrodinger
One lasting contribution Inktomi made
was validating Networks of Workstations
in a commercial context. Remember, at the
time they started, the chief competition
was (DEC-era) AltaVista, which used
the search engine as an example application
for multi-way SMP boxes. Today, you don't
see >2-way SMP used in massive deployments
of applications that are easy to parallelize,
but back when Inktomi started NoW's were novel.
As of Sept 30, 2002 Yahoo had :
$319,319,000 Cash and Cash Equivalents
$936,534,000 Total Current Assets
$276,035,000 Accounts Payable
$420,386,000 Total Current Liabilities